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The Boot Camp runs from 12:00 pm Wednesday, May 25th through 1:30 pm Friday, May 27th
(See below for abstracts of presentations)
ABSTRACTS OF PROGRAM PRESENTATIONS
Wildlife Movements on Canadian Landscapes: Field Research and Data Management
I will be speaking on the sorts of data that we typically collect during large mammal studies in western Canada and our obligation to make these data available to funding agencies and for publication. New guidelines by several scientific periodicals now require that data files be made available to other researchers. Similar requirements are being considered by NSERC. I will address the advantages and concerns with these new data management policies.
Research in Materials and Nanotechnology: Where to Publish
The area of materials science is one of the fastest growing areas of science, based on the sheer number of publications, citations, and increases in funding globally (see Science Watch, Thomson Reuters). Tracking this explosion of papers is a proliferation of journals of different flavours, some highly interdisciplinary, others more specialized, some open access, and many others.
How do researchers choose a journal when they decide to publish their work, and what efforts (games?) are publishers playing to draw authors to their venues? The answer is highly nuanced, country-dependent, and chaotic - in essence, a very human mess of emotions and motivators, as would be expected of a (somewhat) healthy scientific ecosystem.
Hunting Dinosaurs in the Badlands of Alberta, Canada
In 1910, Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History (New York) triggered “The Great Canadian Dinosaur Rush”, which lasted until the mid-1920s. By the time the dust had settled, hundreds of original Alberta dinosaur skeletons were on display in more than 35 institutions around the world. By the 1930s, however, funding for collecting dinosaurs (and for doing research on the specimens already collected) largely disappeared. Research programs in Alberta remained low key through the Second World War and into the 1950s. The establishment in 1955 of the “Drumheller and District Dinosaur Museum” and Dinosaur Provincial Park planted the seeds of change. More than a decade passed, but Canada’s centennial in 1967 was the dawn of a new age. Ground-breaking research on Alberta’s dinosaurs by Dodson, Russell, Bakker, Farlow and others helped to trigger the “Dinosaur Renaissance” that was in full swing by the 1970s. By now, research on dinosaurs focused on aspects of dinosaurian biology and their reproduction, behavior, physiology and relationships.
The UNESCO designation of Dinosaur Provincial Park as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1979) and the establishment of the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology kept Alberta near the centre of international interest in dinosaurs. That interest continued to snowball up to the release of the movie “Jurassic Park” in 1993. Although public interest seemed to peak at that time, research interest continued to surge ahead, gathering momentum. Ironically, Hollywood had educated the public and subtly altered the direction of dinosaur research. Although it is unlikely that dinosaurs will ever be cloned or brought back to life, the discovery of feathers on dinosaurs (plus muscle tissue, blood vessels and even red blood cells in specimens from Alberta and Montana) suggests that it might be possible. In the meantime, computer modeling has muscled and fleshed out many dinosaur species, bringing them to life at least in our minds.
We are in a new golden age of dinosaur research. Never before have there been so many palaeontologists working on these animals. New discoveries of exciting specimens are being made at an unprecedented rate all over the World. But the research focus has changed. It is now more international and multidisciplinary, the questions beingasked are more specific, and computers have become as important as geological hammers. Even though Alberta has been more intensively searched for dinosaurs than most places, and even though the focus of most research publications has changed, new dinosaurs continue to be recovered. In the last few years, more than half a dozen new species of dinosaurs from Alberta have been described and named. Furthermore, spectacularly preserved specimens have been recovered of specimens that were previously known. For example, the most complete and smallest, juvenile horned dinosaur is a Chasmosaurus collected in 2010 (the scientific paper has just been published). Saurornitholestes is the Canadian version of Velociraptor, and a beautiful, nearly complete skeleton was found in 2014. And making news around the world this year is an ornithomimid from Alberta that is covered with fossilized feathers. In 2015, a new dinosaur museum opened its doors in Grande Prairie near one of the most densely packed bonebeds known of a horned dinosaur (Pachyrhinosaurus). As exciting discoveries continue to be made, both public and scientific interest continues to increase.
An Arctic Icon: Polar Bears in a Changing Arctic
Polar bears are front and centre as the poster species for climate change. From cultural, social, historic, evolutionary, and life history perspective, polar bears are a species of incredible interest to society as a whole. I'll explore why polar bears are so vulnerable to climate change and put their ecology and evolution into context for the years to come.
Finding the Bridge(s): Research Data Management Services & University Libraries
University Libraries can typically be seen as a hub of research data management services which span across the research life cycle. From the early stages of project development, through data management planning, active project support, publishing, and on into archiving and curation, the Libraries can play a key role in providing essential supports to researchers and their projects across campuses, disciplines, and methodologies.
This session will offer a synopsis of the research life cycle and the types of services and supports that the Libraries can potentially offer throughout. As well, discussions relating to strategies for identifying and overcoming challenges at different stages, engaging researchers, relationship building, and real success stories will be had. There will be an interactive component to this session, and so participants should be prepared to engage, share information, and even have some fun!
Dr. Janet ElliottFun with Thermodynamics: From the Tiniest Drops to Saving Lives
My research involves the development and application of thermodynamics in a wide variety of research fields from surfaces and colloids to cryobiology. I will share with the audience my love of thermodynamics and a few of my research areas and leave lots of time for discussion about the many research experiences I have had and to answer questions.
Dr. Lee Foote and Christina Hwang
Faculty-Librarian Research Collaborations
Lee Foote's research focuses on wetland management, disturbance, reclamation and wildlife habitat. Sustainable use figures large in his approaches to natural resources. Secondary research areas include social and ecological sustainability of threatened species, and he is currently involved with projects on Trumpeter Swans, Peregrine Falcons, Polar Bears, Lake Sturgeon, and Kalahari Desert megafauna.
Christina Hwang is a University of Alberta Librarian, and serves as liaison to the Faculty of Science. Her professional interests include Research Information Management (RIM), metrics, and data management.
Our informal banquet presentation/discussion will feature some of the work that Lee and Christina have done together, including Media Content Analysis for the Brown Bear Research Team.
Cretaceous Park, the Ancient Palaeo Environment of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada
Many researchers with interest in Palaeobotany and Palynology have over the last century searched for and studied plant fossils that have been found in the Dinosaur Park Formation and the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. These two formations span the Campanian and Maastrichtion (76.5 to 67my) of Alberta. It turns out that well-preserved palynomorphs (spores and pollen and other organic-walled microfossils) are common in the sediments from Dinosaur Park Formation.
It has been possible to identify 500 different species, the affinities of which belong to mosses, lycopods, horsetails, ferns, tree-ferns, conifers, and flowering plants. In a few cases, it has been possible to relate the specimens to known plants. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty with respect to these relationships in most palynomorphs.Macro plant fossils are not common in the Dinosaur Park Formation, although they have been collected over the last 150 years. Macro plant fossils are mostly found as compressions or impressions. At some sites, they are found as molds or casts in ironstone.
Only about twenty different kinds of macro plant fossils have been identified, as the environment seems to have favoured the preservation of palynomorphs rather than leaves. It is very common to find fossil wood in the Dinosaur Park Formation, but so far only three different genera of trees have been identified from the wood. By taking the information from the different studies (palynological, macro plant fossils and fossil wood) it is possible to piece together an environment of the 76.5 to 74.8 MY old Dinosaur Park Formation.
Space Exploration and Climate Change-related Research in the Faculty of Engineering
Certain fields of research are commonly associated with the Sciences and we think of engineers as just building the instruments and tools for the scientists on those fields, instead of doing research. As the only professor of Engineering among the more than 70 Co-Investigators on the Phoenix Mars Mission, Dr. Carlos Lange has experienced this first hand. His talk will cover a few examples of how Engineering research can branch into other fields, such as space exploration and climate change.
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